Minimizing Windows stopped working...

Hi,

from one update to the next it occured that minimizing windows using the xfce-panel taskbar didn't work anymore. It always was possible to minimize a window by clicking the highlighted area (that one that belongs to the window that I want to minimize) in the taskbar. It's still possible to maximize a window this way though... and minimizing by klicking the minimize-button on the upper right corner of a window also works as always. Also the minimize button in the context menu works as well as the "minimize by middle mouse button" option.

Am I the only one around with that problem? Is there a way to make it work again?

Another observation: the hightlighting of the programs in the taskbar sometimes seems to be confused, highlighting programs that shouldn't.

Here's my system info:Xubuntu 14.04 64bitxfce version: 4.10, panel is 4.11Kernel 3.14Dual Monitor (with 2 different panels, one on each screen)Still using the old applications menu (maybe theres a link to my problem... alacarte for example also behaves pretty strange sometimes)

Re: Minimizing Windows stopped working...

I've also got an install of Xubuntu 14.04 that I'm test here. It would appear that if you set the "Middle click action" to "minimize", it prevents the click on taskbar button to minimize action from working. Not sure if its by design or not though. If you set "Middle click action" to "Nothing", it works again.

Re: Minimizing Windows stopped working...

Thanks for that hint. I'll try that later when I'm on the affected system again.

It's strange though because I've activated the middle-mouse-button action just as a workaround for the described problem. So the problem occured before I activated middle-mouse-button-minimize. But I'll try and report anyway.

Re: Minimizing Windows stopped working...

Did try that - no success though. When the middle-mouse-button action is deactivated it *sometimes* (very very rarely and seemingly random) works.

It looks like there are not many people affected from this issue (actually I'm the only one I found out so far). Probably resetting the panel would help... is there a way to do this? I already tried to reinstall those xfce-packages that could somehow be involved but this didn't help.

BTW: Which package is responsible for the taskbar to work properly? Is it the "xfce4-panel" or is there a more specific one?

Edit: Maybe it helps to mention: I use "focus follows mouse" (with no delay) and no grouping in the taskbar.

Re: Minimizing Windows stopped working...

Did try that - no success though. When the middle-mouse-button action is deactivated it *sometimes* (very very rarely and seemingly random) works.

On my now Xubuntu 14.04 (Xfce 4.11) release, the middle mouse button minimize always works (though to be honest, I don't use the windows plugin so I have to add it every time I want to test it).

It looks like there are not many people affected from this issue (actually I'm the only one I found out so far). Probably resetting the panel would help... is there a way to do this? I already tried to reinstall those xfce-packages that could somehow be involved but this didn't help.

BTW: Which package is responsible for the taskbar to work properly? Is it the "xfce4-panel" or is there a more specific one?

Yes, its bundled with xfce4-panel (in the code its referred to as "tasklist").

Edit: Maybe it helps to mention: I use "focus follows mouse" (with no delay) and no grouping in the taskbar.

Tried with both and still working fine here.

Not sure what else to suggest. What if you created another user account to see if the problem persists? Would help identify whether it is a profile problem or a system problem.

Re: Minimizing Windows stopped working...

Good news!

Thanks to ToZ's hint I almost found out what is causing the misbehaviour - it's some setting in the xfwm4.xml in ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/

After I created a new user everything worked fine (logged in as that user). Then I started renaming several folders and files in the xfce4 configfolder until I found out that the configfile for xfwm4 is to blame.

Here is a patch to the xfce4-panel source that restores the former behavior of button 1.I can't vouch for it's robustness but it seems to work for me.It really should be reimplemented as a configurable option.

Re: Minimizing Windows stopped working...

Here is a patch to the xfce4-panel source that restores the former behavior of button 1.I can't vouch for it's robustness but it seems to work for me.

Thanks for that. Is there a way to test this? Unfortunately I'm not very familiar with coding and stuff...

gmargo wrote:

But it's still a bug to me because it breaks the way I usually interact with the panel.

I think it breaks the way anybody would like/expect to interact with the panel. On the other hand: it seems there are not many people complaining about the new behaviour... maybe it's only occuring under certain circumstances? Or maybe no one still minimizes windows this way... is "our way" of handling windows too oldschool?

Would be great if one of the devs would read this thread and clear things up.

Re: Minimizing Windows stopped working...

...or you could post a link (to this thread) to the XFCE developers' mailing list so that they can get a clue - they might actually be unaware at present.

BtW, I'm heartened to learn that there are others in this world who are also annoyed (disgusted?) when developers make changes that do little to no good - and, often, harm - and, indeed, appear to only be making them "for the sake of change." This is one reason I try not to pester people for a newer version of XFCE (et cetera); when they get it right, but the masses clamor for "something newer," it generally means that the newer version is LESS than what came before instead of more... Just look at Firefox for an example, lol, its own developers have done more to convince people to use Chrome than Chrome's developers have.

Re: Minimizing Windows stopped working...

...or you could post a link (to this thread) to the XFCE developers' mailing list so that they can get a clue - they might actually be unaware at present.

Actually I've already subscribed to that mailinglist some time ago but never received anything... so I thought it's dead. But I'll try to reach the devs directly.

MountainDewManiac wrote:

BtW, I'm heartened to learn that there are others in this world who are also annoyed (disgusted?) when developers make changes that do little to no good - and, often, harm - and, indeed, appear to only be making them "for the sake of change." This is one reason I try not to pester people for a newer version of XFCE (et cetera); when they get it right, but the masses clamor for "something newer," it generally means that the newer version is LESS than what came before instead of more... Just look at Firefox for an example, lol, its own developers have done more to convince people to use Chrome than Chrome's developers have.

I agree with you but still don't think the recent XFCE-panel-behaviour-change was made on purpose. And the new firefox looks quite ok in my opinion. It's just a minor visual change that doesn't bother me... not like in every new Windows or MS Office version.

Re: Minimizing Windows stopped working...

I've experienced a bug regarding the mouse wheel to change the active window and focus follows mouse (in LP - https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour … ug/1315623 ), which may be related to this. After looking at the Xfce code, comparing 4.10 to 4.11, reverting chunks of xfwm and xfce4-panel, I couldn't find a fix nor were there many obvious places left to mess with. I suspect that the breakage is not actually caused by changes in Xfce, but is due to changes in Wnck (which the panel uses to get the currently active window, etc.) and the way Xfce interacts with it. But who knows.

Re: Minimizing Windows stopped working...

I've played around with the code of the tasklist plugin, but this bug isn't there. I have a small program to switch quickly between apps on different workspaces, and when I compile that to set its role as pager, it too shows this weird behaviour. But only in xfce. So the bug is in xfwm4, i.e. focus isn't given to windows raised by panel buttons.

Here is the guilty code, from client.c from line 2501:

if (source_is_application || screen_info->params->click_to_focus || (c->type & WINDOW_TYPE_DONT_FOCUS))
{
/*
It's a bit tricky here, we want to honor the activate request only if:
- The window use the _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW protocol and identify itself as an application,
- Or we use the click to focus model, in that case we focus the raised window anyway,
- Or the request comes from an application that we would not focus by default,
such as panels for example
*/
clientSetFocus (screen_info, c, timestamp, NO_FOCUS_FLAG);
}

That call to clientSetFocus() must be made to give focus. Variable source_is_application is TRUE if action called by an app, FALSE if called by a program in role of pager. Previously on clicking the panel buttons, this was TRUE and the call was made. Now the panel is set (correctly) as a pager, and the call is only made if 'click to focus' is in the settings. Inverting source_is_application gets back to how it was:

Re: Minimizing Windows stopped working...

Hello,

1) Inverting source_is_application work.This test confirm clientSetFocus() must be called to give focus, as Simon said.

2) However, I don't fully understand the purpose of the condition below :

if (source_is_application || screen_info->params->click_to_focus || (c->type & WINDOW_TYPE_DONT_FOCUS))
{
/*
It's a bit tricky here, we want to honor the activate request only if:
- The window use the _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW protocol and identify itself as an application,
- Or we use the click to focus model, in that case we focus the raised window anyway,
- Or the request comes from an application that we would not focus by default,
such as panels for example
*/

Why we should test if the program is set as pager or an application ? What are the unwanted side-effects if we removed this condition ?